The purpose of this study was (a) to identify the strengths and deficiencies as perceived by business education student teachers for working with students from diverse cultural backgrounds and for meeting these students' needs, and (b) to examine the business education students' multicultural backgrounds and demographic factors as they relate to their perceptions of their multicultural competence. The participants were business education student teachers at National Association for Business Teacher Education (NABTE) institutions. The 152 business education student teachers who were student teaching in the spring semester of 1996 were from 12 Southern Region states as defined by the National Business Education Association (NBEA) to be: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Wayson's (1993) The Multicultural Teaching Scale was classified into Banks' (1993) Dimensions of Multicultural Education to determine the perceived multicultural teaching competence of business education student teachers. The five dimensions are Content Integration (8 skills), Knowledge Construction Process (6 skills), Prejudice Reduction (11 skills), Equity Pedagogy (5 skills), and Empowering School Culture (7 skills). The results of the study indicated that business education student teachers perceived themselves as having moderate or extreme multicultural competence two dimensions, Equity Pedagogy and Empowering School Culture. Further, they perceived themselves as needing to develop competence in the other three dimensions, Content Integration, Knowledge Construction Process, and Prejudice Reduction. The outcomes of regression analyses revealed that ethnicity was significant in predicting the Content Integration dimension. Ethnicity, multicultural kg round and area of student teaching were significant in predicting the Knowledge Construction Process dimension. city, gender, and multicultural background were significant in predicting the Prejudice Reduction dimension. Ethnicity, gender, area of instruction, and multicultural background were significant in predicting Equity Pedagogy dimension. Ethnicity, gender, hours of instruction, and multicultural background were significant in predicting the Empowering School Culture Dimension. The findings of the study indicated that age was not a significant predictor of multicultural teaching competence for all five dimensions. / Ph. D.